The banking industry's inflection point rewinds to the introduction of internet banking. What started as a trickle has now turned into a flood tide. And it has changed banking beyond recognition. Bank is no longer a place. It has 'fundamentally transformed' itself into an activity we do at our convenience. All you need to do is whip out your smartphone and tap on an app. And voila! You have it all at your fingertips. You can make payments, book tickets, transfer funds and avail of the latest discounts.

Not one to be left behind in the high-stakes battle for customer satisfaction, Axis Bank is flexing its digital muscle to come up with innovative offerings for its customers. In an interview with Amit Sethi, CIO of Axis Bank; Ashwani Mishra turns the spotlight at a digital revolution that is ringing in at Axis Bank. A CIO, who calls himself a banker first, understands that the current situation demands urgency of acting acute. This is a digital battle where his bank must win. And he must get there quickly. In the digital world, tomorrow is already too late.

Q] How has enterprise mobility changed the manner in which Axis Bank engages with external customers?

With the advent and high penetration of smartphones in the last three years, 3G adoption and now 4G being rolled out, mobile apps have really become the new sun with everything else orbiting around it, and this is true for all banks as well.

At Axis Bank, our strategy is to be present where the customer is and on their preferred mode of channel. Our engagement is emphasized on creating solutions that are simple and easy to use.

We were very clear to make mobile as one of our primary channels for customers. If one can listen to the customer and have innovative thinking around it, one can create a multitude of offerings which users can connect with and accept it as well.

Another important aspect is that one needs to work a lot on user experience and make it effortless. So the designing of a mobile app has to be done cautiously, and it has to strike a chord with the user in terms of their experience to ensure good adoption.

Q] Mobile app is the most visible part of your consumer facing digital strategy. What are the new initiatives that you plan to undertake to strengthen this area? Also how has been the performance of your mobile apps already rolled out?

We re-launched our mobile app roughly two years back, and since then have seen an amazing uptake. As a matter of fact, we have witnessed triple digit growth year-on-year both in terms of number of users and the volume of transactions on mobile.

Similarly, there has been a huge shift in the transactions that happen at the branch versus what happens in the digital medium. Today we have over 90 percent of our transactions happen on the electronic channel as compared to the branches.

We launched PingPay around 10 months back. It was directed at the youth segment and garnered a good response garner. Simultaneously, we also conducted a research with our users and asking them what more they wanted apart from mobile and social apps. As an outcome of the research we realized that a lot of people were looking to have apps that followed their lifestyle rather than a pure play banking app.

This meant that users were looking at the ability to get a consolidated view of all their finances linked to any of their bank accounts, have the capability to invest in a simple manner, have features to shop, and also have the ability to form a collaborative wallet with their family or friends.

The launch of our app called LIME in September last year was basis the result of our research and the feedback from customers. It was India's first mobile app integrating wallet, shopping, payments and banking. We already crossed over 5 lakh downloads of that app, and it has been one of the fastest growing apps in the banking space. It has amazed us as well with the kind of feedback and uptake that we have been getting from customers.

Q] So far banks have mainly used digital channels like mobile and Internet to provide services to their customers? Do we see the emphasis rapidly switching to sales? Will online and mobile channels, ultimately converge to create the truly digital bank?

Yes it will and it is happening. If you take the example of LIME, to use this app you don't have to be an Axis Bank customer. Around 60 percent of users, who are not our customers, have downloaded this app. Here we do give them an option to upgrade and becoming Axis Bank's customer.

Q] What are some of the interesting projects that Axis Bank is working on from an IT perspective? Could you share some key highlights of your IT achievements?

We clearly have a focus on three main areas. One is around a secure digital strategy where we are building a front end for our customers and moving beyond basic banking services on the mobile and becoming a part of their lifestyle through mobile apps.

Our second priority is around internal digitization of the bank and to continuously improve our turnaround-time where users can start differentiating with other banks through services. If you see, most of the products in the banking space are common. The differentiating factor lies in the service delivered through speed and quality of the execution. This can only happen when we have a seamless integration of various process and systems inside the bank. Omni-channel experience is what we call it, for our external as well as internal customers. A lot of work has been done both in terms of reimagining our internal processes as well making a technology shift and move to a totally seamless process.

The third area of focus has been around data management and the analytics piece. We have made huge investments in the last few years in building a data repository, and creating an analytics workbench. We have been doing great tech stuff like working with open stack technologies, Hadoop, trying to experiment with Artificial Intelligence, and ensuring that fraud and risk management happen in real time.

Q] You have been one of the early adopters of cloud in the banking space. How are you creating a set of capabilities that helps you embrace this new world of the hybrid cloud model?

We were one of the first banks to go on the public cloud for some applications that were permissible under the regulatory framework. We use cloud services from Amazon and Google but we have refrained from placing customer data on the cloud as of now. Internally we are on private cloud. And this hybrid model is helping us get benefits in terms of agility, elasticity and cost savings. I want to mention that one needs to have a cautious approach in doing so and adhere with the regulatory norms.

Q] How would you best describe your role as CIO at Axis Bank?

IT used to be a service provider internally, but that role has changed long ago. I consider myself to be a banker first and then a technology evangelist. My primary role is to work very close with the business, understand their issues/requirements, keep them abreast of the tech advances, and contribute in creation of business IT solutions for today and the future.

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